MSS: Ryan Sutter

Ryan Sutter has made the transition from reality TV star to endurance athlete, and he talks about how swimming has become the biggest challenge in his quest to do well in triathlons. He describes his training time in the pool and how it fits in with his races.

Show Transcript: (Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Peter Busch: This is The Morning Swim Show for Thursday, October 6th 2011. I'm you host Peter Busch. In the FINIS monitor today we'll talk to Ryan Sutter. Pop culture fans probably know him best as the last man standing on the first season of ABC's hit show "The Bachelorette," but he's always been a heck of an athlete. He's now focusing on triathlons. Ryan Sutter joins us right now in the FINIS monitor from Vail, Colorado. Hey Ryan, welcome to The Morning Swim Show. How are you?

Ryan Sutter: I'm good, thanks. How are you?

Peter Busch: Good. So you're a firefighter right now, huh?

Ryan Sutter: That's right.

Peter Busch: But you're obviously staying in great shape but used to be a football player, now you're doing some triathlon stuff. We've seen a video of you swim and working on your technique, how is it going?

Ryan Sutter: It's getting better. It's a slow process but I'm sort of sticking with it and trying to get a few seconds here and there.

Peter Busch: It's harder than it looks, isn't it?

Ryan Sutter: Yes, it's a challenging sport. It's difficult because you can't just go harder and go faster. You have to get better at your technique, it's the only way you're going to get better at swimming and that's where I struggle.

Peter Busch: I know you're working with Gatorade on a series of videos and getting into triathlons. How did you decide to go this route with your athletic career?

Ryan Sutter: I just needed an athletic focus. Football had been sort of the priority in my life athletically for 25 years or so and that kind of ended and I needed some place else to put that energy. I didn't want to continue to do sort of weightlifting and high impact types of things in my body because it was already kind of starting to wear out so I kind of started getting into endurance sports with some friends and really enjoyed the process and enjoyed the sports and kind of one thing led to another and here I am.

Peter Busch: I know you had a shoulder injury when you were playing in the NFL. Does that affect you when you're swimming?

Ryan Sutter: No, I had it all surgically repaired years and years ago and that shoulder actually feels better than the healthy shoulder. I really haven't had any lingering effects from that other than just a sore back but I think everybody gets that at my age.

Peter Busch: So what's the goal here for you? Are you going to be doing specific events, is there one in mind that's the ultimate goal?

Ryan Sutter: I've always been a little bit more drawn to the [inaudible 2:36] races that the distances seem to fit me a little bit better and I like being on my mountain bike more than my road bike. But working with Gatorade this year I've done a whole bunch of different ones - an International Distance in Chicago and three or four [inaudible 2:53]. Actually I have 70.3 coming up this weekend in South Carolina, a REV3, and then the New York marathon sort of caps it off in October or November. I've kind of been doing a wide variety of them this year and sort of just taking one at a time because they kind of are coming - kind of rapid fire and then I'll see what I like the most and kind of incorporate those into next year's schedule.

Peter Busch: And in terms of the swimming part of it how often do you train, what do you do, where do you swim?

Ryan Sutter: In Vail there's not a whole lot of open water swimming opportunities so most of that comes in races. I swim two or three times a week now which is up from what I used to do just at a local pool most of the time. In the sort of height of the summer we have an open water swim, a one-time-a-week open water swim opportunity here so I try and take advantage of that as much as possible. I've really found that just getting in the water as much as possible has helped my swimming more than trying to do really long sessions once or twice a week, maybe getting in the water two or three times a week, and not going quite as long has seemed to help so I'm kind of trying that program for now.

Peter Busch: How are Trista and the kids?

Ryan Sutter: Oh they're great. As usual we're scrambling. Trista and I are leaving for South Carolina today so my mom just came in town to watch the kids and I think they're making pumpkin bread upstairs or something like that. So it's one of those kind of crazy days but we're getting used to it and the kids keep us on our toes and they're fun. Actually we really enjoy going to the races and cheering me on so that's kind of a nice thing to have.

Peter Busch: Very cool. So when's the next race?

Ryan Sutter: Sunday, this Sunday, REV3 in South Carolina.

Peter Busch: Very cool. Well good luck and thank you very much for joining us.

Ryan Sutter: Thanks for having me.

Peter Busch: All right, that's Ryan Sutter joining us in the FINIS monitor today from Vail, Colorado. Ladies, you're welcome. That's it for today's show, I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.